I am an evil giraffe. But I'm trying, Nick. I'm trying REAL HARD to be the wizard.

I’m forced to ask a question in response to this thesis by Josh Kraushaar: “Hillary Clinton is a near-lock for the Democratic nomination for many reasons, but among the most significant is that her challengers have minimal appeal to the party’s base of African-American voters.” …All well and good; but what’s her appeal to those voters, exactly? I mean, don’t get me wrong: I understand that, lacking an obviously good choice, many voters default to the front-runner; but what’s going to get African-American voters off of their couches and into the voting booths to vote in the primary?

This is not a trivial question: while Josh does note at the end of the essay that “if [Hillary Clinton’s] winning non-white voters in the primary by default—running against old white men with limited ties to the rising Democratic electorate—she could face a rude awakening next November” it still doesn’t mean that Clinton’s going to get enthusiastic support in the primaries. In fact, it really is arguing that Hillary Clinton can expect not to get enthusiastic support. And probably not much turnout. (more…)

It’s apparent that even the most vigorous black turnout effort in the eight states [of thirteen with contested Senate races, including Georgia and Kentucky] with low black percentages is not going to make much difference. Democrats there must hope that their candidates can maintain levels of support from whites at or above the levels achieved by Obama in 2008 and 2012. In addition, Democrats inColorado must hope they can maintain something like the 75 to 23 percent margin Obama won among Hispanics there in 2012 according to the exit poll. (Note: I have been skeptical, just based on instinct and observation of county vote totals, about the Colorado exit poll, which I suspect understates Obama support among whites and overstates it among Hispanics.)

In the five states with above-national-average black percentages, there’s obviously good reason for Democrats to try to bolster black turnout. But to win a Democratic candidate must also do significantly better than Obama did among whites in Arkansas, Georgia and Louisiana and somewhat better than in North Carolina.

As I have said, many times: I do not know what the right answer is when it comes to intervening in Syria. Every option is bad, with negative consequences and poor results. If I was a Member of Congress I would be frantically trying to go through what information I have available, in order to determine the least-worst scenario and vote for that. Because of all of that, I cannot in good conscience call for Members of Congress (Republican AND Democrat) to do anything except vote their consciences: if I don’t have the right answer myself, I shouldn’t try to second-guess a legislator’s own sense of morality.

Apparently, somewhere about half* of Republicans in Congress follow @redstate on Twitter, so there’s a decent chance that they’ll see this advice. Anyway, I’ve been banging a drum on this issue all weekend, but I’ll bang it again: vote your conscience. Don’t feel pressured to vote against intervention, for intervention, for a different kind of intervention than the one you favor, or any other combination or scenario. There’s a reason why Speaker John Boehner signalled that he hopes other caucus members will vote to authorize, or why House Majority Leader Eric Cantor only intends to vote for intervention: they’re not going to whip the vote, and there’s not going to be a push to rush the process.

So don’t rush into this, and vote for what you think is the best, or more likely the least bad, option.

PS: As I noted here, I don’t actually know what the best option is. Every one of them ends poorly.

*The exact number is 51.5% of all Republicans with ‘official’ Twitter accounts. Apparently 97% of all Congressmen have Twitter accounts, so it’s safe enough to say that about half of the GOP members of Congress are at least monitoring RedState.

No histrionics, no bravado, no nonsense: what I could do, I have done. So now it’s up to you. Go vote. It looks like early voting in Ohio did indeed take a big chunk out of the Democrats’ presumed lead – I think big enough to give Romney the win there* – so don’t think that your vote may not mean anything. Even if you’re like me and living in a blue state; somebody on that ticket is counting on you to show up.

So vote.

Moe Lane

*As you might have guessed already, I actually didn’t have Ohio scored for Romney in my predictions yesterday. OH early vote data provided by @redistrict, by the way.

What we could do, we have done; it’s up to the voters now. That’s you, so make sure you vote.

Odd: I’ve been preparing for this day since November of 2006 – admittedly, I thought that it’d come in November of 2008 – and I find that the somewhat (melo)dramatic things that I had in mind to write aren’t really all that appropriate. Even the national party is trying to keep things low-key tonight (which is smart of Rep. John Boehner).